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On Understanding Climate Change

Just like a forest needs a lot of trees, climate needs a lot of weather. As there are many people who cannot see the forest for the trees, many cannot see the climate for the weather. One does get tired of hearing people, even meteorologists, cite some weather observation and imply that it has a relevance to global climate.

And just like a forest develops in a region of earth that has favorable ecological characteristics, earth’s climate evolved in a favorable region of the solar system, of the universe. And just like a forest dies if the balance is upset, like the average temperature rises enough that pine beetles can survive the winter, the average temperature rise can doom the favorable-to-life-region called earth. And in both cases it’s looking like this can be a very small temperature rise.

It only takes 1 deg warming to get large sections of forest sufficiently above freezing on the average — to statistically get too many pine beetles surviving. So it is difficult for many to think this temperature change is significant, particularly in view of the very large temperature swings that take place daily and seasonably. But when data is accumulated from around the globe, and over many decades, it is straightforward to correlate dying forests to latitude and hence to a slight movement poleward of the freezing latitude.
Apparently it only takes less than a degree global temperature rise to reduce the Arctic pack ice thickness from ten feet to one foot, and to show a trend toward NO pack ice there in anywhere from 10 to 50 years. Admittedly, there is much more than one degree temperature rise in the Arctic (Arctic Amplification) and we don’t know exactly why. This is not true of the cause of global warming, CO2 from fossil fuel burning, a no-brainer that we have discussed here.

I read a lot of papers relating to global climate change, including many from those who deny the validity of this science. I’m basically a mathematician and geophysicist so I’m used to looking at the long-term earth systems. But I also love trees, hiking in forests and around glaciers, and eating shellfish (I also enjoy tornados and strong hurricanes as something that I study). So I can’t help wondering whether Global change is affecting me; now. It’s beginning to seem that this is the reasonable conclusion.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.